How to travel overland between Europe & China or
Japan...

A journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway should be on everyone's bucket list.
It's safe, comfortable & affordable. On this page I'll explain the
routes, trains, classes, prices, answer your questions, and help you plan & book
your trip...

What is the Trans-Siberian Railway?

The Trans-Siberian Railway is just one part of
the massive Russian railway network, transporting passengers and freight safely
at affordable prices. It connects the European rail network
at one end with either Vladivostok or the Chinese rail network at the other. Take a look at the route map
below to see
where the Trans-Siberian Railway goes. You can use it to travel overland in either direction between London, Paris or anywhere in Europe and
China, Japan, Korea or even Southeast Asia...

Moscow to Vladivostok: Every second day,
the Rossiya (the Russia, train number 2
eastbound, train 1 westbound) leaves Moscow on its 6-night
journey to Vladivostok. This is
almost the longest train ride
of them all, 9,259 km or 5,752 miles. This train has 1st class 2-berth
compartments called spalny wagon or SV, 2nd class 4-berth
compartments called kupé, open-plan bunks called platskartny & a restaurant car,
see the
photos below or
virtual tour. One-way fares in the summer
months cost around 18,629
rubles ($640 or £420) in kupé or 31,175 rubles ($1,070 or £695) in
spalny vagon, a bit more if booked through an agency.
See a brief account
of the journey. From Vladivostok there is a
weekly ferry to
South Korea & Japan, taking 36 hours (2 nights).

Two routes to China:
Although the main Trans-Siberian line runs from Moscow to Vladivostok,
most western travellers head for China on one of two
branches, the Trans-Mongolian line (completed in the 1950s) or
the Trans-Manchurian line (built around 1900),
see the route map below. There are two direct trains
each week
between
Moscow & Beijing, train 3/4 via Mongolia using Chinese
coaches and train 19/20 Vostok via Manchuria using Russian coaches.

Moscow to Beijing via Manchuria:
The weekly Trans-Manchurian train (the Vostok, train 20
eastbound, train 19 westbound, using Russian rolling stock)
leaves Moscow on Saturday nights for Beijing via Manchuria, taking
just over six days to cover the 8,986km (5,623 miles).
Westbound, it leaves Beijing every Saturday night. There are 2-berth 1st class compartments (spalny vagon) and
4-berth 2nd class compartments (kupé). Prices are similar
to the Chinese train.

Other Trans-Siberian trains: These aren't the only Trans-Siberian
trains. Far from it! Many other trains run over parts of these
routes. There's
even a slightly slower Moscow-Vladivostok train, train 100 taking 7 nights
instead of 6...
See the Trans-Siberian timetable below.

Train 2, the Rossiya from Moscow to Vladivostok, 6,152 miles
in 6 nights. Courtesy of Hubert Horan

Train 4 from Moscow to Beijing via Mongolia.
Courtesy of Tony Willis

Train 20, the Vostok from Moscow to Beijing the weekly
Russian Trans-Manchurian train, at Ulan Ude. Each carriage proudly carries
the lettering 'MOSKVA-PEKIN'. Or did. This train too is now
appearing in corporate RZD grey and red! 6 days,
5,623 miles...
Photo courtesy
of
David Smith

Recommended guidebooks...

Train 2, the Rossiya from Moscow to Vladivostok,
6,152 miles in 6 nights. Photo courtesy of Hubert Horan

Train 4 from Moscow to Beijing via Mongolia.
Courtesy of Tony Willis

Train 20, the Vostok from Moscow to Beijing the weekly
Russian Trans-Manchurian train, at Ulan Ude. Each carriage proudly carries
the lettering 'MOSKVA-PEKIN'. Or did. This train too is now
appearing in corporate RZD grey and red! 6 days,
5,623 miles...
Photo courtesy
of
David Smith

Train 6 from Moscow to Ulan Bator, freshly re-equipped with modern air-conditioned Mongolian Railways
cars in 2017, similar to the cars now used on the Rossiya. Note the
galloping horses logo! The thrice-weekly Irkutsk-Ulan Bator version of
train 6 uses modern Russian Railways cars. Photo courtesy of Philip Dyer-Perry.

1. When to go? Eastbound or westbound? Is it
safe?

Yes, the Trans-Siberian is
perfectly safe, even for families or solo females. It's the way Russian
families and women travel, after all.

You can go at any time of year as the Trans-Siberian
Railway operates all year round. Naturally, the summer months from
May to September have the best weather and the longest daylight hours so are the most popular. In winter it's easier to get tickets, the trains
are warmly heated and the Siberian landscape beautiful in the snow, but the
hours of daylight will be shorter and stretching your legs at stations or
visiting the cities will be chillier. In many ways it's the slushy thaw
around April that's least attractive.

On board the trains, Kupé 4-berth
sleepers (2nd class) is the usual comfortable choice for most westerners.
2-berth Spalny Vagon (1st class) is double the price and is only for people who
aren't worried about cost.

You can travel the Trans-Siberian Railway
either eastbound or westbound, it's up to you, although eastbound tends to be
more popular with westerners, perhaps because going out by rail from your local
station and flying back is more romantic than starting your trip with a flight.
On this page I cover both directions, remember that any comments written from an
eastbound perspective usually apply westbound too!

2. Decide on your route & final
destination...

The Trans-Siberian
Railway doesn't just go to Vladivostok. It links Europe with
China, Japan, Korea, even Vietnam and South East Asia. How about
going to Beijing?
Shanghai? Hong Kong? Tokyo? Tibet?
See
the interactive Trans-Siberian route map to open your mind to all the
possibilities which the Trans-Siberian Railway offers. You can even reach
Hanoi, Saigon, Bangkok or Singapore overland from London.

Vladivostok is an
interesting place for a day or two if you're passing through before catching the
ferry to Japan or Korea, but
probably not worth a 7 day journey from Moscow just for its own sake. Beijing is a
far better choice of destination
as it's an absolutely amazing city that's well worth the overland trip from
Europe.

The Trans-Mongolian is
easily the most interesting of the three routes, even though it means an extra
visa, there are superb views of the Gobi desert and a
chance to stop off in Mongolia on the way.

3.
Do you want to stop off?

You cannot buy an open ticket and hop on and off, as the Trans-Siberian is an
all-reserved long-distance railway where everyone gets their own sleeping-berth
and every ticket comes printed with a specific date, train number, car & berth
number. However, you can easily arrange stopovers along the way using a
separate ticket for each train, easily pre-booked especially if you use the
Trans-Siberian Trip Planner.

The varied scenery and camaraderie on board the direct Moscow-Beijing trains
makes non-stop travel on these trains an enjoyable option and maximises your
time in China. On the other hand, travelling to Vladivostok non-stop in 7
days can be tedious (I should know) and it's better the break up the journey and
see something of Siberia. And even if you're heading for China, there's
lots worth stopping off for on the way if you have time.

The obvious stopovers are Irkutsk in Siberia for Lake Baikal and Ulan
Bator in Mongolia, for a side trip into the Gobi desert. If you
have more time, Ekaterinberg & Ulan Ude are also
worth a stop.

To
help decide where to stop off, buy a copy of Bryn
Thomas' excellent Trans-Siberian
Handbook, with journey planning information, town guides,
the history of the line, and best of all, a mile-by-mile guide
to the sights you can see from the train, which really helps you get the
most from the trip. The Lonely Planet
Trans-Siberian Railways guide is also good.

4. Plan your Trans-Siberian
trains...

There is no such train as the
Trans-Siberian Express but a whole range of trains across
Siberia, including countless Russian domestic trains plus a handful
of direct international trains to Mongolia and China.
Plan your trains using the
Trans-Siberian
timetable below or
the Trans-Siberian trip planner. Within Russia, there are both faster
quality firmeny trains & slower cheaper trains, it's your call which you
take.

So for example, if you chose to
travel from Moscow to Beijing straight through without stopovers, you'd
obviously book one of the weekly direct Moscow-Beijing trains, trains 4 or 20.
But if, say, you wanted to go from Moscow to Beijing with stopovers at Irkutsk
and Ulan Bator, you might first take any regular daily Russian domestic train
from Moscow to Irkutsk, and it might be nice to ride the Moscow-Vladivostok
Rossiya for this bit unless a cheaper ticket for a slower lower-quality
train better suited your budget. Then you might take train 6
from Irkutsk to Ulan Bator 4 times a week, as this is easier to get berths on and more frequent
than waiting for weekly train 4. Then you might pick up trains 4 or
24 from Ulan Bator to Beijing. Browse the
Trans-Siberian
timetable or use the Trans-Siberian trip planner.

5. How much will it cost?
How long does it take?

To give you a rough idea, the
cheapest trip put together yourself would include a Moscow-Beijing 2nd class
train ticket from around £442 or $590, plus a London-Moscow train
ticket for around £200. You'll also need at least 1 night in a hotel in
Moscow, and of course you need to budget for visas for Russia, China and
possibly Mongolia and Belarus, plus travel insurance.
But it all depends on what you want to do, and how economically or luxuriously
you want to travel.

In terms of time, London to Beijing with a one day stopover in Moscow
takes around 10 days, London to Beijing with 2-days in Irkutsk and 3
days in Ulan Bator in Mongolia would take 15 days. London to Tokyo
or Hanoi with stopovers in Moscow and Vladivostok takes about 14 days.
You could reach Bangkok in around 20 days. But where and how long
you stop off is up to you. I suggest sketching out
an itinerary and budget using the method explained on the
How to plan an itinerary & budget
page.

If you want to pay an expert to put an
itinerary together for you and advise you on how to book it, Andy at
DiscoverByRail.com provides a
'travel architect' service, with suggestions for routes,
trains, stopovers, hotels to your own specification, and advice on getting
visas. He charges a fee of
around £35 per trip.

Booking your trip...

Step 1.
Buy your Trans-Siberian train tickets.

When you have planned your
journey, the first thing to arrange are your Trans-Siberian train tickets.
There are several ways to buy tickets, some cheaper but more effort, others
easier but more expensive. See the how to buy tickets section below
for an explanation of
all the options, but I'd recommend the Real Russia
Trans-Siberian trip planner as arguably the best compromise
between cheapness & simplicity for arranging your tickets.

Step 3. Book your hotels.

To find & book hotels in Moscow,
Beijing, Vladivostok or in cities along the way, I suggest using
www.hotelscombined.com
both as a hotel search engine and as a hotel price comparison to find the
cheapest seller of any given hotel. It's a remarkable site, it checks all
the major hotel booking sites at once, including Expedia, Hotels.com, Agoda,
Booking.com and many more. Alternatively, I often use
www.booking.com
as my hotel booking site, as you can usually book their hotels with free
cancellation, so you can safely book your accommodation as soon as you decide on
your travel dates without any risk of losing money, before confirming your train
tickets or visas.

Step
5. Book your train from
London to Moscow:

Finally, arrange travel from London to Moscow to connect with the
Trans-Siberian, see the London to Russia
page. You can also travel to Moscow by
direct sleeping-car from Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Helsinki and many
other places, to find train times, use
www.bahn.de/en. Bookings for European trains typically open 92 days before
departure, you can't book until reservations open, so do this
bit last.

Don't fly to Moscow!

Flying to Moscow to pick up the Trans-Siberian Railway is
like entering a marathon and then accepting a lift in
someone's car for the first hundred yards... Don't cheat! If
you're going to go overland to the Far East, do it properly, starting at London
St Pancras and staying firmly on the ground. It's easy to travel from
London to Moscow by train,
click here for train times, fares & how to buy tickets.
How
about starting your Trans-Siberian trip with Eurostar from London to Paris and
then a ride on the excellent
Paris-Moscow Express?

Real trains for real travellers...

The Trans-Siberian Railway is a regular railway, a means of transport vital to
the people living along it. It's not run for tourists, so you
won't find bar cars with pianos or deluxe suites with en suite showers (although
one or two tourist cruise
trains now operate on the Trans-Siberian from time to time,
details here). However,
all passengers get a proper flat berth to sleep in, provided with all necessary
bedding, convertible to a seat for day use. There are washrooms and
toilets along the corridor, and a restaurant car for meals. Whichever
train you take, the Trans-Siberian is a safe and comfortable way to reach China and the Far East.
You'll find more details about food, showers & toilets in the
Travel tips & FAQ section.

A request: If you get any good current interior or exterior photos to
illustrate trains 3/4, 5/6, 56, 71/72, 99/100, 305/306, 23/24,
please let me know!

The Rossiya (Russia) runs from Moscow to Vladivostok every
other day, 5,752 miles in 6 nights, with 2nd class 4-berth
sleepers (called kupé) and 1st class 2-berth sleepers (called spalny vagon or
lyux) with two lower berths, and a restaurant car.
It's a very comfortable train. There are toilets and washrooms at the end of the corridor, room for luggage
under the lower berths and above the door to the corridor, and all compartment
have power sockets for laptops and mobiles. There's even a flat-screen TV
in every sleeper compartment, although this may or may not show anything of interest...
Compartment doors lock securely and you may even find a card-key system
available in the 1st class cars so you can lock up when you go to the
restaurant. The Rossiya's coaches were replaced in the early 2000s and again a year
or two ago, and the latest
interiors are shown below. Other
Russian firmeny quality trains on the Trans-Siberian Railway are similar,
but with different exterior colour schemes - although RZD's corporate grey
& red colour scheme is now being applied even to the Rossiya itself.
Photos below courtesy of Yves Goovaerts, David Smith, Nicholas Stone & Hilary Onno.

The Rossiya on its
journey from Moscow to Vladivostok. After years in a special red,
white and blue colour scheme, in 2017 even the famous Rossiya is
now in RZD (Russian Railways) corporate red and grey. Photo
courtesy of Hubert Horan.

The Rossiya. An
air-conditioned sleeping-car...

2nd class 4-berth, more correctly
known in Russia as kupé...

The restaurant car on the
Rossiya serving meals, drinks & snacks...

1st class 2-berth sleeper
on the Rossiya with seats converted to beds. Similar to 4-berth but without the upper
berths.

Corridor side of the same
2-berth compartment, showing the TV screen.

Sound system...

There's a power socket
under the table...

A typical restaurant
meal...

The Rossiya at Vladivostok
station. Photo
courtesy of Hubert Horan...

Virtual tour of the Rossiya:

Click here
for a virtual tour inside the Rossiya from Moscow to
Vladivostok. The this nifty virtual tour on the RZD website shows 4-berth & 2-berth sleepers
& restaurant
car.

The Man in Seat 61 says:
"A journey from Moscow to Vladivostok on the Rossiya was a totally different experience
from a previous journey from Moscow to Beijing on train 4.
Travelling to Japan via Vladivostok, my 1st class 2-berth car
was comfortable, spotlessly clean and even air-conditioned. I usually ate
in the restaurant car,
and by the end of the trip Mischa in the kitchen would have my ham & eggs in the
frying pan for breakfast as soon as I appeared in the restaurant. In
contrast to the vibrant international community on board train 4 to Beijing, on
train 2 I was the sole Westerner aboard until Irkutsk. And also unlike the
Moscow-Beijing train where almost everyone is making the complete journey, very
few passengers on the Rossiya are going all the way to Vladivostok. The
Rossiya is used for all sorts of shorter intermediate journeys, with Russians
getting on and off at every station. I had a compartment all to myself on
leaving Moscow, then shared it with a professional Russian ice hockey player
from Yaroslavl to Perm, on his way to trial for the team there. His place
was taken by a Russian lady from Yekaterinburg to Irkutsk who said very little.
In Irkutsk two professors from Alabama joined the train and became my meal
companions in the restaurant. The train stops several times a day, usually
only for 10-20 minutes, but you can stretch your legs and take photographs.
Arrival in Vladivostok was a full two minutes ahead of schedule, seven days
after leaving Moscow. The ocean terminal is adjacent to the station, but you may
need to spend a night in Vladivostok to be sure of a safe connection.
Vladivostok is an interesting city, and a day or two spent there will not be
wasted. Overall, the Moscow-Vladivostok route is 7 days of Siberia on a
train with few fellow westerners and indeed few Russians making the whole trip.
This makes for a much less interesting journey that the Moscow-Mongolia-Beijing
train, and one that it would be good to break up with stopovers rather than make
in one go."

Trains 3 (westbound) and 4
(eastbound) link Moscow & Beijing once a week all year round, taking the shorter
and most interesting route via Mongolia and the Gobi desert, 4,735 miles in 6
nights. The train is Chinese, and has Chinese carriage attendants.
Using the correct Chinese terminology it has deluxe soft sleepers
(2-berth), soft sleepers (4-berth) and hard sleepers (also
4-berth). Most westerners are content to use the fairly comfortable &
economical
4-berth hard sleepers, which are essentially the equivalent of 4-berth kupé on
the Russian trains. The 4-berth soft sleepers are not
worth the extra money as they are virtually identical to the 4-berth
hard sleepers, just
slightly larger, though not so as you'd notice without getting your tape measure
out. However, the 2-berth deluxe soft sleepers are definitely worth the extra cash if you can get one, as they
have upper & lower berths and an armchair in
one corner, a small table and access to a compact
en suite washroom with shower
head shared with the adjacent compartment,
see the deluxe sleeper photo here. Don't expect too much of the shower
head though! There are both western and
squat toilets at the end of each car, along with washrooms. A Russian
restaurant car is attached whilst the train is in Russia, a Mongolian one in
Mongolia and a Chinese one whilst it is in China,
see food details here.

How to avoid confusion over classes...
Remember that this train is Chinese, not Russian. Deluxe soft sleeper,
soft sleeper & hard sleeper are usually translated for
westerners as 1st class 2-berth, 1st class 4-berth & 2nd class 4-berth,
certainly by agencies at the Chinese end. In my opinion that's an
appropriate translation as the Chinese 4-berth hard sleepers are equivalent to
4-berth kupé sleepers on Russian trains, and so can safely be thought of as 2nd
class, not 3rd. However, some Russian agencies including the reliable
Real Russia booking system
translate the deluxe soft sleeper, soft sleeper & hard sleeper
on this Chinese train as 1st, 2nd and 3rd class, where 2nd class means a
1st class 4-berth soft sleeper that's not worth the extra money and 3rd class
means a comfortable 4-berth hard sleeper which is more accurately thought of as
2nd class and which I would recommend for most budget travellers. I hope
that's clear! Oh, and train 4, train 004, train 004Z (or in Cyrillic, what
is often mistaken for 0043) are all the same train, train 4...

The Chinese restaurant car
on train 4, attached between Erlan & Beijing. A Russian
restaurant car is attached whilst in Russia, a Mongolian one
in Mongolia. Courtesy of Peter & Janet Jackson.

Train 4 crossing Mongolia...
The train calls at Ulan Bator, then sweeps across the wide open
spaces of the Gobi desert. Courtesy of Tony Willis.

Train 19 westbound, train 20
eastbound, the Vostok is the Russian train linking Moscow and Beijing
once a week. It by-passes Mongolia, crossing directly from Russia into China via the
older and slightly longer route through Manchuria, 8,986km (5,623 miles) in 7
nights. The name Vostok simply means 'East'. The Vostok was given a
makeover in 2012-2013, and the photos below show the new red and grey colour scheme and smart refurbished
interior. The train has Russian-style 2-berth & 4-berth sleepers, and a
restaurant car - a Russian restaurant when in Russia and a Chinese one when in China.
There are power sockets for laptops, cameras or mobiles in every compartment. Unlike the Chinese 2-berth sleepers on train 3/4, the Russian 1st class 2-berths
on this train are of the Russian spalny vagon type with two lower berths, think
of it as a 4-berth with the upper berths removed, but no washbasin or adjacent
washroom, as in the 4-berth sleepers there are toilets and washrooms at the end
of the corridor. For an account of this journey,
see Angie Bradshaw's blog here.

Train 19 from Beijing to Moscow.
This train now carries the corporate RZD red & grey colours.
Photo courtesy of David Smith.

4-berth sleeper on train 19
from Beijing to Moscow. Photo courtesy of Angie Bradshaw,
see her blog here.

The Russian restaurant car
attached to train 19 whilst in Russia.
Photo courtesy of David Smith.

Another shot of train 19
whilst in Russia.
Photo courtesy of David Smith.

Here is a summary of all the most important trains
on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Make sure you read the notes! The
times shown are departure times unless it says otherwise, at most stations you
can assume the arrival time will be 5 to 15 minutes before departure.
There are other slower trains not shown here, simply use the Real Russia online
system here
to find train times for all possible trains, or to confirm these times.

All times shown below are local
time... Russian trains used to run to Moscow time whilst in Russia,
even if local time was 7 hours ahead of Moscow. However, but RZD Russian Railways ended this century-old
practice from August 2018 and now use local time in all their timetables and
booking systems.

Fun with time zones... Russia
made Daylight Saving Time
(DST) permanent in 2011 making Moscow GMT+4 all year round but in 2014
they changed their minds and abolished it altogether, so Moscow is now GMT+3 all
year round. So China is now permanently
5 hours ahead of Moscow
as they too have no DST. Mongolia was also permanently 5 hours ahead of
Moscow and on the same time as Beijing, until the Mongolians changed their minds
and reintroduced DST in March 2015 making them GMT+8 (Moscow +5, Beijing+0) in
winter but GMT+9 (Moscow+6, Beijing+1) in summer. But in 2017 they've
changed their minds again and have once more abolished DST so Mongolia is
now GMT+8 or Moscow time +5 all year round. Until someone changes their
mind again, of course.

Time zones: Moscow time
is GMT+3 all year round. Mongolia is GMT+8
from late September to late March and GMT+9 from late March to late September. China
is GMT+8 all year round. Mongolia re-introduced daylight saving
time in March 2015, whilst Russia made DST permanent in 2011 then abolished it
in 2014. Do try and keep up!

Note A:Rossiya.
High-quality firmeny train,
see here for photos & more information. Runs every second day, leaving Moscow on odd-numbered dates (1st, 3rd, 5th
etc.) all year round except the 31st. Runs from Vladivostok on even-numbered
dates (2nd, 4th, 6th etc) except following a month with 31 days, when it will
leave on the 1st, 3rd, 5th, then 8th, 10th and even numbered dates onwards. 2-berth spalny vagon, 4-berth kupé,
platskartny berths & restaurant car. You can check days of operation using the
online system here.

Note B:Moscow-Beijing
Trans-Mongolian express,
see here
for photos & information &
see
here for an illustrated account of the journey. Leaves Moscow every Tuesday
eastbound, leaves Beijing every Wednesday westbound. Operated with Chinese coaches
& staff. 1st class 2-berth, 1st
class 4-berth, 2nd class 4-berth. Russian restaurant car whilst in Russia, Mongolian
restaurant in Mongolia,
Chinese restaurant in China. Note that if you're trying to buy a ticket
from Ulan Bator to Beijing, berths on train 4 can only be booked within 24h of
departure from Ulan Bator, so you'll find it much easier to use train 24
instead. Train 4 can be shown online variously as train 4, train 004,
train 004Z or with a Russian letter Z as a suffix so it looks like train 0043.
They all mean train 4. And similarly for train 3.

Note C: Train 6 runs
from Moscow on most Wednesdays, train 5 runs from Ulan Bator on
most Fridays. It has modern Mongolian Railways spalny vagon (1st class)
2-berth sleepers and kupé (2nd class) 4-berth sleepers. A restaurant car is attached in Mongolia
& in Russia. It runs every week between late May
& late September, but only on alternate weeks off-season, check departure dates using the
Real Russia online system.
See here
for photos & more information

Note D:Vostok.
Moscow-Beijing trans-Manchurian express. Leaves Moscow every Saturday. Westbound, leaves Beijing every
Saturday. Operates with Russian coaches & staff. 2-berth
spalny vagon, 4-berth kupé. There is a Russian restaurant car whilst in Russia
and a Chinese
restaurant car in China. From December 2017 it runs in the similar timings
to the Rossiya between Moscow & Ulan Ude and when running days of both
trains coincide it will be coupled to the Rossiya.

Note F: This is a slower, cheaper, lower-quality alternative to the
high-quality
Rossiya for journeys within Russia. 4-berth kupé
and platskartny only, there are no 2-berth sleepers on this train. From
December 2017 this train runs every day Moscow-Vladivostok,
check
dates using the online system.

Note G:
Train 305/306 runs 3 times a week from 10 December 2017 onwards, check
dates using the online system. It has 4-berth kupé sleepers on all
departures, but only the Monday & Friday departures from Irkutsk have 2-berth spalny vagon
sleepers.
The Mongolians claim all 3 departures per week have spalny vagon in the other
direction, but I suspect the Monday departure from UB may not have 2-berth
spalny vagon if the Wednesday departure in the other direction doesn't.
The Mon & Fri departures from Irkutsk and the Tues & Sat departures from UB use
older non-air-con Russian cars, the Wednesday departure from Irkutsk & the Monday departure from
UB use Mongolian cars. All together, trains 3/4, 5/6 & 305/306 link Irkutsk & Ulan Bator
4 or 5 times a week. There's no restaurant car so bring your own
provisions.

Note
H: Runs once a week all year, twice a week in summer. This train is operated by the Mongolian Railways one year and
Chinese Railways the next year, switching over each year at the end of May when
the days of operation also change. Assuming the pattern continues, this
is how it should work...

From May 2017 to May 2018
and from May 2019 to May 2020, Chinese Railways run the main
all-year-round service with train 23 from Beijing to Ulan Bator running every
Tuesday, train 24 from Ulan Bator to Beijing running every Thursday.
The Mongolians then run an additional weekly
departure in summer from late June to early September, train 24 Ulan
Bator to Beijing also running on Saturdays, train 23 Beijing to Ulan
Bator also running on Mondays.

From May 2018 to May 2019, Mongolian
Railways run the main all-year-round service with train 23 from Beijing to
Ulan Bator running every Saturday, train 24 from Ulan Bator to Beijing running every Thursday.
The Chinese then run an additional weekly departure in summer from late June to
early September, train 24 Ulan Bator to Beijing running additionally
on Fridays, train 23 Beijing to Ulan Bator running additionally on
Tuesdays.

Note that's it's much easier
to buy a ticket from Ulan Bator to Beijing on train 24 than to get a berth on
train 4 coming through from Moscow. There are alternative, less
convenient but more frequent ways to get from Ulan Bator to Beijing, with
changes of train,
click here for details.

Trains 3/4, 5/6 & 19/20 between
Moscow, Ulan Bator & Beijing are mainly for passengers making international
journeys e.g. Moscow to Beijing, Irkutsk to Beijing or Moscow to Ulan
Bator) although they may offer berths for domestic Russian journeys. But if you want to stop off at Ekaterinberg or Irkutsk for example,
you would normally take a Russian internal train between Moscow, Ekaterinberg &
Irkutsk such as the Rossiya or train 100 as these run more
frequently.

If you're trying to do the
Trans-Mongolian route flexibly, buying tickets as you go, this is relatively
easy between Moscow & Ulan Bator as there are a whole
range of domestic trains every day between Moscow, Irkutsk & Ulan Ude and
you'll usually find places available even on the day of travel, even if not
always on your first choice of class or train. There's then a daily
train between Irkutsk or Ulan Ude and Ulan Bator, although only one carriage of
this train goes through to/from Ulan Bator, but there's often places available
at short notice.

The
real pinch-point is between
Ulan Bator and Beijing where there are just two or three direct trains per week.
And one of those is train 4 coming through from Moscow on which only limited berths
are available for passengers joining
at UB and these are only released for sale 24 hours before departure from UB. However, there are alternative
Mongolian domestic trains between Ulan Bator and the Chinese border, so you're
very unlikely to be stranded. Here are the alternative trains, which are not shown in the
timetable above:

Southbound: Ulan Bator
to the Chinese border & onwards to Beijing: (1) There is a daily overnight sleeper train
(number 276) from Ulan Bator to Zamin Uud on the Mongolian side of
the Chinese border, just 10km from the Chinese border post at Erlian. It
leaves Ulan Bator at 17:20 and arrives Dzamin Uud at 07:07 next morning, the
fare in a soft sleeper is around 40,000 Mongolian Tugrik ($22). (2) Local buses or taxis
are available to Erlian - a taxi will cost around 40-50 RMB, about $7. (3)
There is then at least one daily train from Erlian to Jining South (Jining Nan)
taking 6h50, fare for a hard seat around $7. (4) There are then various
daily trains from Jining South to Beijing, journey between 5h00 and 9h30
depending on the train, fare about $12 for a hard seat. You can check
train times for China using the planner at
www.chinahighlights.com.

Northbound: Beijing to
the Chinese border for a train to Ulan Bator: (1) Take one of the various daily trains from Beijing to
Jining South (= Jining Nan), journey 5h00-9h30 depending on the train, fare in a
hard seat around $12, you can find train times using the planner at
www.chinahighlights.com. (2) Then use
www.chinahighlights.com again to find a train between Jining South and
Erlian, there's at least one per day taking 6h50, fare for a hard seat around
$7. (3) Erlian is the Chinese border post, so you'll need to take local
transport such as a local taxi the 10km or so across the border to Dzamin Uud on
the Mongolian side. (4) From Dzamin Uud, train 275 runs to UB daily leaving Dzamin Uud at 18:20
and arriving Ulan Bator at 08:55 next morning. The fare in a soft sleeper
is around 40,000 Mongolian Tugrik ($22).

Alternatively, on Mondays & Fridays, a
hard class sleeper train (train 34) leaves Ulan Bator at 20:50 arriving Jining
South (Jining Nan) around 19:00 next day
- the train's final destination is Hohhot. There
are then several daily trains from Jining Nan to Beijing, journey 9 hours, fare
about $7 with soft class seat.
www.chinahighlights.com/china-trains
will confirm train times for any journey within China, just be aware that
trains 3, 4, 23, 24 aren't daily.

On Thursdays & Sundays, a hard
class sleeper train (train 22) leaves Ulan Bator at 20:50 for Erlian,
just on the Chinese side of the border, arriving next morning. There are
daily trains from Erlian to Jining Nan (Jining South) then a number of
daily trains from Jining Nan to Beijing. Use
www.chinahighlights.com/china-trains
to find trains within China.

You can check current times
for all these Mongolian trains - international and domestic - using the
Mongolian Railways website
www.ubtz.mn - this is in Mongolian, so use Google Chrome to translate into
English. If you have more information on these alternative UB-Beijing
journey, please e-mail me!

In a nutshell...

As little as
£492 or $686 buys you a one-way train ticket from Moscow to
Beijing on train 4 including a bed in a 4-berth sleeper,
pre-booked through a reliable agency such as
Real Russia.
For almost 5,000 miles of travel, a bed for 6 nights and
a memorable world-class travel experience, that's a
bargain!

If you want a bed in a 2-bed sleeper,
make that around £787 or $1,097.

If you
want to stop off at places on the way, that increases
the ticket price a bit, but not hugely.

Add train
tickets from London to Moscow for around £250 and you're
all set for an epic journey from the UK to China.

You should
budget for at least one night in a hotel in Moscow, £40
upwards depending on how classy a hotel you want.

The full
story...

First, a reality check.
People expect me to tell them 'the fare' between Moscow and Vladivostok or
Beijing. It ain't like that! True, the Russian have a set
international tariff for trains to China, which may or may not be the same
as the Chinese Railways international tariff for journeys westbound to
Russia. But the direct international trains often leave fully-booked,
at least in summer, so you usually have to buy through an agency, and
these agencies know that demand exceeds supply and resell tickets with
whatever mark-up or added fees the market will bear. So you have to
shop around for quotes, rather than expecting to pay the official price.
And then there are both international and domestic tariffs. So if
you're stopping off in Russia, the fare for
a domestic train will be different from the international rate, and will vary significantly by time of year
and how high-quality the train in question is. It's a bit of a
black art, but I'll guide you through the jungle...

The good news is that a Trans-Siberian
journey needn't be expensive if you travel
independently rather than with an inclusive tour. It's
a real railway with regular fares, not an expensive tourist
attraction. But what you pay varies significantly
depending on:

Which class you
choose. Most western travellers go 2nd class 4-berth
(kupé). 1st class 2-berth (spalny vagon ) is
nice if you can afford it, but twice the price of kupé so only worth it if
money is no object. 3rd class (platskartny open-plan bunks) is a bit
basic for most western travellers and not available on every
train, but some adventurous low-budget travellers go for it.

Which train quality you choose:
For journeys wholly within Russia, you can travel on a firmeny fast quality train (recommended) such
as train 2 Rossiya or a slow unnamed lower-quality train
such as trains 240, 340 or 100 which have cheaper fares.
As a general rule, low train numbers are quality trains,
slower low-quality trains have three-digit train numbers.
When you contact an agency, make sure you know what specific
train number you're being quoted a fare for so you compare
like with like.

Whether you travel
independently (cheaper) or book an all-inclusive tour (more
expensive).

How you buy: If travelling
independently, you can buy your ticket through a Russian
travel agency like
Real Russia (cheaper, recommended, easy to use with English
language after-sales service), or a western travel agency (more
expensive), or book direct with Russian Railways at rzd.ru (fiddly, but works
and accepts most people's credit cards) or at the ticket
office (cheapest, but not always practical if you need to be
sure of being on a certain train on a certain date).

If booking through
an agency, which agency you use. Demand for the two
weekly Moscow-Beijing trains exceeds supply, Russian Railways
sells off tickets to travel agencies before bookings
open to the public, and these agencies sell tickets to
tourists for whatever price they can get for them. So
you need to shop around!

Some quality
trains such as the Rossiya offer tickets with or without 'services'.
'With services' just means that one or more cooked meals is included in the
price, either served in your compartment or eaten in the
restaurant car, like
the meal shown in these photos. A number shows the number of meals you
get on the whole trip. It might just be one meal, even on a 7-day journey!
Other meals you'll need to pay for in the restaurant, or bring your own
supplies.

Prices if you buy tickets
at the ticket office in Moscow...

Here are typical fares
charged by Russian Railways, taken from the
Russian Railways website www.rzd.ru -
see my advice on
using it here. In the search results,
Reserved seat = platskartny, Compartment = kupé 4-berth, Luxury
= spalny vagon 2-berth.
Russian fares vary by season, higher in summer, lower in
winter, the ones below are for May 2016. As you can see, higher fares are charged
for fast high-quality firmeny trains, lower fares for slower
low-quality trains. I recommend firmeny trains unless you are
on a tight budget. www.rzd.ru also lets you buy Russian domestic train tickets online, but not
tickets for the international trains to Mongolia or China, and it may struggle
with some overseas credit cards.

One way, per
person, in roubles:

Platskartny

3rd class bunks

Kupé

2nd class 4-berth

Spalny vagon

1st class 2-berth

Moscow - Vladivostok (firmeny train 2 Rossiya)

10,323
(£114)

23,533 (£261)

46,031 (£511)

Moscow - Irkutsk (firmeny train
2 Rossiya)

7,261
(£81)

15,820 (£175)

30,884 (£342)

Moscow - Irkutsk (slower train 100 or 70)

4,885
(£55)

11,854 (£132)

-

Moscow -
Yekaterinburg (firmeny train
2 Rossiya)

3,156
(£35)

7,139 (£80)

13,846
(£177)

Moscow -
Yekaterinburg (slower train
100 or 70)

2,148
(£23)

5,043 (£56)

-

Yekaterinburg - Irkutsk (firmeny train 2 Rossiya)

5,533
(£62)

9,642
(£107)

19,643 (£220)

Yekaterinburg - Irkutsk (slower train 100 or 70)

3,733
(£42)

8,989 (£100)

-

Irkutsk - Vladivostok (firmeny train 2 Rossiya)

6,613
(£73)

11,712 (£130)

26,204 (£292)

Irkutsk - Vladivostok (slower train 100 or 134)

4,453
(£50)

8,609 (£97)

-

Irkutsk - Ulan Bator (train 6)

-

About $80

-

Moscow - Beijing
(trains 3, 4 or 19, 20) or

Moscow - Ulan Bator (trains
5 or 6)

The price charged at the
ticket office for trains 3/ 4, 5/6, 19/20 is almost
irrelevant. Demand exceeds supply and tickets are bought in bulk by
Russian travel agencies before booking opens to the
public, so the ticket office will usually tell you they
are full. You should
buy through an agency
if you want to travel on these trains.

With or without services? On the best trains you can buy
tickets without services meaning without any meals, or with services
meaning with some meals included, either served in the restaurant or in your
compartment. On the Real Russia
booking system, a knife & fork logo with a number against that class (with a
У1, У4, and so on appearing if you hover over it) in the class column indicates a 'with services'
price where the number shows the number of meals provided. On
www.rzd.ru a 'with services'
carriage is shown with a У1, У4 and so on against it in the category column - no
'У' and no number means without services. Don't get too excited:
On the Moscow-Vladivostok Rossiya a 'with services' ticket means you get
just one meal, even on a 7 day trip!

Prices if you buy
tickets from Real Russia or other Russian agency...

Unless you have
lots of time and can afford to take pot luck when you get to
Moscow, you'll probably want to book your trains in advance.
Most westerners buy tickets
through a travel agency, either a local Russian one such as
the excellent Real Russia
or other reputable Russian agencies (recommended) or a
specialist western agency
(sometimes less hassle, but significantly more expensive). Different
agencies charge completely different prices for the same journey, so shop around
for the best deal. However, to give you a rough idea, here are the prices
charged by Real Russia, including their agency mark-up. 'Shopping around'
means emailing each agency for a specific quote, not just looking at their
website, as some agencies don't update their sites when prices rise - and
Russian & Chinese railways have imposed some big fare rises in recent years.
When emailing an agency, be specific about which train you want, and remember to
ask about their delivery charges & credit card fees. I've seen websites
quote very competitive prices for (say) Moscow-Irkutsk which turn out to be for
a low-quality slow train, and the price they charge for a quality firmeny train such as the
Rossiya is much higher and less competitive. When you get
quotes, make sure you compare like with like! And some agencies charge
credit card fees of up to 12% on top of their advertised fares (Real Russia
charge 2.5%), so make sure the quote explains these.
How to buy tickets from Russian
travel agencies.

Prices if you buy
tickets from a western travel agency...

There are various
western agencies who specialise in Trans-Siberian travel.
They can sell you a package tour or arrange a tailor-made tour
for you, but they can also sell just a train ticket if you like. Their prices vary enormously, so shop around.
With higher overheads to support, a western agency will charge
much more than a local Russian agency.
More information about
arranging your trip through a western tour agency.

Children...

In Russia, children under 5 sharing
a berth with an adult go free, children 5 to 10 travel at half
the adult fare.

Note that even though under 5s
travel for free if they share a berth, you must still book a free-of-charge
ticket for them with their name on it. If you want to give them their own
berth, you simply pay for a child ticket.

On the Trans-Manchurian and
Trans-Mongolian international trains (trains 3, 4, 19, 20),
children under 4 go free if they share a berth, children 4 to
11 (inclusive) travel at 75% of the adult fare.

For journeys wholly within China,
children under 120cm tall travel free, 120-150cm tall travel
for half fare, over 150cm tall pay full fare (new child height
limits since December 2010).

Trans-Siberian train times, prices & online tickets...

Planning a trip with stopovers?

Click the image above to book
trains, one at a
time. To plan a trip between Moscow and Beijing or Vladivostok with
stopovers, use the multi-leg Trans-Siberian trip planner.
This will book all your trains at once with stopovers wherever you want for
however long you want.

Is
this the cheapest way to buy tickets? Real
Russia is an agency, and the fares shown include a
mark-up on RZD ticket prices. They also make a 2.5% charge
for credit card payments, but you can avoid this if
you call at their UK office to pay by debit card
when your tickets are confirmed. Real Russia
are a reliable agency which gets good reports, so I
recommend them and seat61 gets some commission if
you buy through them. I suggest comparing
prices with the
other
Russian agencies shown here, and of course you
can buy tickets at the
station without any mark-up or
buy online from RZD, at least
for domestic Russian routes. The full story on
all the possible ways to buy Trans-Siberian train
tickets is explained in the
following sections.

What tickets
can this system sell? www.trains.realrussia.co.ukcan sell
tickets for any mainline train journey within
Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus,
Lithuania, Kazakhstan and the other ex-Soviet
states, including the Trans-Siberian Railway.
It can also sell tickets starting in those countries
heading outwards, for example Moscow to Beijing or
Irkutsk to Ulan Bator. Reservations officially
open 60 days before departure, but with Real Russia
you can request tickets up to 180 days ahead and
they will contact you for payment when the price is
confirmed.

Can
anyone buy tickets using this system? Yes,
you can buy tickets online with a credit card
whether you live in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia,
Singapore or wherever.

How
are tickets delivered? Tickets are
collected free of charge at Real Russia's offices in
Moscow or St Petersburg, or an e-ticket can be
emailed to you so you can collect the ticket from
most main stations in Russia. Tickets can be
sent to UK or EU addresses for a £12-£15 fee, or
couriered to any address worldwide, also for an
extra charge.

Booking tips: 'Firmeny' trains marked
'firm' are the best trains, with modern coaches and
good on-board service. 'TBC' means the system
cannot provide an online price for that particular
train, but they'll call or email you with the cost. Note that in Russia,
even babies & infants need to have a ticket booked for them, even though they
travel for free.

Is buying tickets at the
station a practical proposition?

If you have a
definite itinerary and limited time, and want to be sure of confirmed reservations, you
should go straight to option 2 below to
pre-book your tickets in advance through a reputable agency. However, if you have lots of
time, want to stay free and flexible, and are willing to take pot luck on what
places you find available, it is indeed possible to buy your tickets at stations as you
go along, at least for journeys wholly within Russia. It's not usually
difficult to get a ticket for a Russian internal journey a day or two before
departure, for example Moscow-Ekaterinberg, Moscow-Irkutsk or even
Moscow-Vladivostok, assuming you can be flexible about your exact departure
date, time and class of travel. The daily Irkutsk-Ulan Bator train is not
too difficult to book at the ticket office, either.

But for travel between Russia
and Mongolia or
China, here's a reality check: Demand exceeds supply for the two weekly Moscow-Beijing Trans-Mongolian
& Trans-Manchurian trains (trains 4 & 20), also the weekly
Moscow-Ulan Bator train (train 6), at least in the busy May-September peak
summer season. Russian
Railways opens bookings 60 days before departure, and Russian
travel agencies buy up all the tickets to resell them at a mark-up.
Station staff might tell you that these trains are all sold out even if
you went to the station soon after bookings opened to the public, although you may be able to buy tickets if you called one of the
agencies. If you want to use these trains, you should pre-book through an
agency as shown in option 2 or 3 below. Ulan
Bator to Beijing is also a pinch-point, as there are only 2
trains a week, so this too is best booked in advance through
an agency.

How to buy tickets in Moscow & Russia...

You can
go to the ticket office at any Russian station and buy a
ticket for any journey in Russia, including the
Trans-Siberian Railway. This is the cheapest way to book because you
pay
the real Russian Railways price with no mark-up or agency fee. Remember to
take your passport.

To avoid
language problems, it's a good idea to learn the Russian alphabet so you can
write down your requirements to show to the ticket office staff. When
writing dates, use roman numerals for the month, or example for '3 June 2013'
write '3 VI 2013'.

Many big
Russian stations now have a 'servis tsentr' (service centre)
where you pay a small fee of around 100 rubles to buy your ticket in a relaxed
air-conditioned environment, and it's well worth paying this small extra fee for
the hassle it can save you. Russian railway reservations are computerised,
so you can arrange any journey from any station, as long as the journey starts
in Russia or one of the ex-Soviet states.

Buying
Trans-Siberian tickets in Ulan Bator: Go to the building marked
National tickets sold here. International tickets are sold on the 2nd
floor, open 08:00-20:00
Monday-Friday. At weekends use the normal booking window.

The
building marked 'International tickets sold here' is no longer in service. Feedback appreciated.

Buying
Trans-Siberian tickets in Beijing: Go to the CITS office on the
ground floor of the Beijing International Hotel, open 09:00-12:00 &
13:30-17:00 Monday-Friday, 09:00-12:00 on weekends and holidays.
See location map.

You can buy tickets in Ulan
Bator at the international booking office which is now located on the 2nd floor of the building
next to the station shown on the map on the right marked National tickets sold here

The office is open 08:00-20:00 Monday-Friday.
At
weekends use the normal booking windows. Credit cards are not accepted,
but there is an ATM on the first floor of the building.

International trains to Irkutsk,
Moscow and Beijing can be booked up to 30 days in advance, except for berths on
the Moscow-Beijing and Beijing-Moscow trains 3/4, on which berths for passengers
joining at UB are only sold 24 hours before departure.

If you are travelling to Beijing and find trains
4 & 24 fully-booked, don't worry, there are alternative trains from Ulan Bator
to northern China, where you can change trains for Beijing, and indeed a daily
overnight train from Ulan Bator to Dzamin Uud on the Chinese border from where
you can easily reach Beijing any day of the week,
see here for details of these alternatives.

Since 2015, the
international ticket office is no longer located on Zamchyd Gudamj as marked
on the map on the right. It is now on the 2nd floor of the building
marked 'National
tickets sold here'. Further feedback
always appreciated.

How to buy tickets in Beijing...

You can buy westbound Trans-Siberian tickets in
Beijing
at one of the designated reservation offices, although not at any of Beijing's
stations. The two weekly Beijing-Moscow trains often get booked up well in
advance, so buy tickets as far ahead as you can. However, don't despair if
you need to travel in the near future, as it's not impossible to get tickets
from Beijing to Moscow a week or two ahead, certainly outside peak season.
Westbound trains are generally easier to get
berths on than eastbound trains, and it's easier finding a place in winter than
in the May-September peak season. Train 3 to Moscow via Mongolia is often fully
booked a couple of weeks in advance especially in summer,
although it can be easier to get a berth on train 19 via
Manchuria, which occasionally has berths available even a few
days before departure, but obviously not always! So the basic
message is this: If you positively have to be on a
specific train on a specific date, forget booking at the
ticket office, you should pre-book via
CITS or some other
agency and pay their extra fee. But if you're living in
Beijing, or plan to be there for some time before leaving, and
can be a bit flexible about exactly what date you leave, booking in
person can be an option. You can buy
Trans-Siberian train tickets in Beijing at:

The CITS international train booking office on the ground floor of
the Beijing International Hotel. This is about 5
minutes walk north of Beijing railway station on Jianguo Men Nei Dajie,
see location map. It's open 09:00-12:00 & 13:30-17:00 Monday-Friday, 09:00-12:00 on weekends and holidays.
It's not well-signed, but simply go through the hotel's main entrance and turn
left, looking for a passageway at the far left side if the reception desks.
It's unlikely to be crowded. The staff speak
basic English and leaflets are available with international
train times & fares in English. See the section
above for fares.

Alternatively, try BTG Travel &
Tours who have various agency offices around the city.

Most western travellers want
their Trans-Siberian reservations confirmed in advance before they leave home.
The best option is to buy tickets over the internet through a reputable local
agency such as Real Russia,
www.realrussia.co.uk.
Real Russia have developed an online trip
planner that makes planning a Trans-Siberian journey &
ordering tickets easy, eastbound or westbound, with or without stopovers. In terms of price,
simplicity & a sound reputation for customer care, they're one of the best
agencies. The company was started by a Brit with links to Russia, hence the
.co.uk. The prices shown on
the Real Russia system are the Russian railways price plus a mark-up (all agencies mark up the base price). Their system is
linked to the actual Russian Railways database for train times, prices &
availability, orders are fulfilled manually when made online, with good
English-language after-sales service if you need it.

On the next page
you can choose where you want to stop off, and
select how many days to spend in each place.

Then it'll give you
a choice of trains & prices for each leg of your
trip, and let you order all the tickets in one go.

How
are tickets delivered?
Tickets are collected free of charge at Real Russia's offices in Moscow or St
Petersburg, or sent to UK or EU addresses for a £12-£15 fee, or couriered to any
address worldwide, also for an extra charge.

About this system...

Who runs this
service & are they reliable?
It's provided by Real Russia, a reliable UK-Russian
company which gets many positive reports from users. So much so that Real
Russia has become RZD's (Russian Railways') biggest single customer.

Can
anyone buy tickets using this system? Yes,
you can buy tickets online with a credit card
whether you live in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia,
or wherever.

Is
this the cheapest way to buy tickets? Real
Russia charge the Russian Railways fare with a mark-up to cover their costs. There's
a 2.5% charge for credit card payments, but
you can avoid this by calling their UK office to pay
by debit card when your tickets are confirmed.
By all means shop around
other agencies. Seat61 gets some commission if
you book through this system.

These agencies may keep their own waiting lists and will take Trans-Siberian
bookings months ahead, well before the 60 day point when they can buy up the
actual ticket, so contact a booking agency as far ahead as you can.

All these agencies have been recommended by Seat61 correspondents
and are all reputable, although further
feedback
is always welcome. Booking through one of these
Russian agencies is much cheaper than booking through a
western
travel agency, but prices vary
enormously from agency to agency, so shop around. Make sure that you
compare like with like, so any quote you
get is inclusive of credit card fees, and you know
whether it's for a slow low-quality train (3-digit train
numbers) or one of the fast quality trains such as the
Rossiya (one or two-digit train numbers &
usually a name).

Tickets can be picked up at their
offices in Moscow or
sent to you for a courier fee. Some agencies (but not
Real Russia) may
ask you to fax them a photocopy of your credit card and/or
passport, which sounds dodgy, but is not unusual
when dealing with Russian companies.
Be prepared for a 7%-12% credit card fee (Real Russia charge
only 2.5%), but using a credit card is still a
safer way to buy tickets than using a money transfer. These Russian agencies can also book hotels in Moscow and
other Russian cities, and they can arrange a visa support
letter for Russia (or use the recommended visa
service at
www.realrussia.co.uk).

For booking trains 3/4, 5/6 & 19/20 on the Trans-Mongolian and Trans-Manchurian
routes, it helps to know how the system works: Russian Railways open up
bookings for these trains 60 days before departure.
Knowing that demand for these trains exceeds supply, Russian agencies buy up
blocks of tickets, leaving few or none for sale at the ticket office. The agencies then re-sell these tickets for whatever price
they can get, which may bear no relation to the face value of the ticket.
Trans-Mongolian train number 4 is particularly popular, and 1st class deluxe
2-berth on this train can sell out very quickly indeed, with more travel
agencies trying to fulfil orders from rich privacy-loving westerners for deluxe
berths than there are deluxe berths on the train. So these particular
trains should be be booked well in advance. You'll sometimes be told by
one agency says the train is full, but another agency has speculatively bought a
block of tickets and has some left, or knows a rival agency that it can buy
tickets from. So once again, the message is shop around!

Most of these agencies can also book journeys starting in China or Ulan Bator
through their contacts in those countries, but as these contacts also take a
'cut' you'll usually find it cheaper to book
journeys starting in Beijing direct with
CITS as described below.

Remember that an agency cannot
100% confirm your reservation until Russian Railways opens reservations, 60 days
ahead. However, travel agencies will
take your booking (and money) several months ahead
as they keep their own internal waiting lists for the most
popular trains such as the Moscow-Beijing Trans-Mongolian &
Trans-Manchurian trains. They will make
your reservation with Russian Railways the moment bookings
open, 60 days ahead.
99.9% of the time there's no problem, but very occasionally
there are more tourists wanting berths than there are berths, especially
for the deluxe
2-berth 1st class on Trans-Mongolian trains 3/4 as this is
very popular with rich shower-loving westerners. If you're trying
for the deluxe 1st class, tell your agency in advance that
you'll accept a 1st or 2nd class 4-berth ticket (or that
you're willing to pay for
dual occupancy of a 4-berth compartment) if the deluxe
2-berth is sold out.

To book Trans-Siberian trains
which start in Beijing, whether you want a ticket all the way to Moscow or only
as far as Ulan Bator or Irkutsk, one of the best agencies to use is is
www.chinahighlights.com/china-trains.
Their online system makes booking easier than with most other agencies including
CITS, especially if there's any doubt about what days your train runs, you can
pay by credit card, they are reliable and get good reports. They charge in
US$ with a $20-$60 service fee and will deliver tickets to any hotel or private
address in mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau. By all means shop around,
but their prices are usually pretty competitive even compared to CITS, for
example Beijing to Moscow on train 3 for $569 in a 2nd class (hard class) 4-bed
sleeper. Chinahighlights can only arrange tickets starting in China, so if you wanted to stop off in Irkutsk
for example, you'd need to buy the onward Irkutsk
to Moscow ticket from Real Russia or a
Russian agency.
Feedback is always appreciated.

CITS are the
official Chinese state tourist agency, and they're usually
one of the cheapest ways to buy westbound Trans-Sib tickets from Beijing. You can book trains from Beijing to Moscow, Irkutsk or Ulan
Bator by emailing info@cits.com.cnor by calling CITS on
+ 86 10 6522 2991, lines open Monday-Friday 09:00-17:00
GMT+8. The CITS website is www.cits.net,
direct link
www.cits.net/china-tour/trans-siberian-trains. Expect to pay by
bank transfer rather than credit card. Reports suggest they can't book
Beijing-Irkutsk tickets on train 3, only Beijing-Krasnoyarsk and beyond, so by
all means ask for Beijing-Irkutsk, but be prepared to accept an offer of a
Beijing-Krasnoyarsk ticket and simply get off in Irkutsk (though their website
shows Beijing-Irkutsk fares!). As with most other Chinese agencies CITS can only arrange tickets starting in China, so if for
example you wanted to stop off in Irkutsk, you'd need to buy the onward Irkutsk
to Moscow ticket from Real Russia or a
Russian agency.
Further feedback on the CITS booking situation would be welcome.

Monkey Shrine (www.monkeyshrine.com) is an experienced China-based tour agency who can arrange a tailor-made itinerary with stop-overs and hotels along the way,
plus help with visas. Monkeyshrine offer a good service,
but are naturally more expensive than booking it all yourself
via CITS or Chinatripadvisor. A key advantage is being able to arrange
onward tickets, not just tickets starting in Beijing, and to
arrange hotels or tours along the way. They charge €649 (about $850) for a one-way Beijing to Moscow ticket in
4-berth on train 3.

You can now buy Russian
train tickets online using the RZD (Russian Railways) website
www.rzd.ru, with no fees or mark-up. You
usually print your own ticket. It now has an English
version although it takes a little finding,
see my advice on using the Russian
Railways website. It's a bit fiddly and not as user-friendly as
Real Russia, but it does work if you persevere. It accepts some overseas credit cards, but
can struggle with others. It sells all Russian domestic
tickets including Russian domestic Trans-Siberian trains, also some
international trains, but it cannot sell eastbound tickets from Ulan
Bator to Beijing or westbound tickets from Beijing or Ulan Bator into Russia.
Rzd.ru may reject some US-issued cards.

The
most hassle-free way of arranging a Trans-Siberian trip,
but the most expensive, is to arrange a tailor-made
itinerary through one of the western travel agencies
who specialise in independent travel to Russia. There
are various agencies in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and so on. They can arrange your
Russian visa, your hotel in Moscow, your Trans-Siberian train
reservation, stop-overs and tours if you want them in places like
Irkutsk or Mongolia, connecting trains in China and even
the ship to Japan. You can go in either direction, as they can make all
the necessary arrangements through contacts in each country. Here are some
top agencies to contact for a quote...

Real
Russia,
www.realrussia.co.uk. This is a well-respected UK-Russian
company, originally doing just visas, then Russian train
tickets, and now inclusive
Trans-Siberian tours. You can use them wherever you live. Real Russia really know what
they're doing, and have tours with better class of hotels
and more feature-laden itineraries, at cheaper prices than
many other western operators, so I'd contact them first. Seat61
gets some commission if you use the
www.realrussia.co.uk link, but
feedback is always
welcomed. Reports on Real Russia's service with
visas and train tickets are always very positive.

Railbookers are an experienced rail holiday
specialist with offices in the UK & USA, and they can custom-make the
whole train journey from London St Pancras to Beijing, including Eurostar, 1
night in Berlin, sleeper to Moscow, 2 nights hotel in Moscow, 6 nights aboard
the Trans-Mongolian express (train number 4) to Beijing, 1 night hotel in
Beijing and British Airways flight back to London.
They can extend the trip to Shanghai or Xian, or add extra nights in Beijing if
you like.

IntoRussia, formerly Intourist
UK,
www.into-russia.co.uk ,
call 020 7603 5045 (UK callers only): A
well-established and experienced UK agency, IntoRussia is the descendant of the
Russian tourist agency Intourist, they can
arrange tailor-made Trans-Siberian itineraries. They can also book
westbound Beijing-Moscow trains (which for some reason cost a few pounds
more than eastbound), stopover tours along the Trans-Siberian Railway, the
Vladivostok-Japan ferry and key trains in China. Getting to Moscow, hotels
in China, visas and return trains/flights are extra - you can arrange these
yourself or they can do this for you.

Trans-Sputnik,
www.trans-sputnik.nl.
This is a Dutch agency, but very good value so they are
worth contacting even if you're not Dutch! They offer one-way Moscow-Beijing
fares from €635 2nd class 4-berth or €945 1st class 2-berth on train 4, a bit
more for train 20.

Sundowners,
www.sundownersoverland.com:
Sundowners offer all sorts of tours, including trips
covering just train travel plus a night or two's hotel at
each end. Sundowners offer Moscow-Beijing trips via Mongolia, with many options and
stopovers available.

Flower
Travel Pty (Australia),
www.trans-siberian.com.au, an Australian agency.
A whole range of Tans-Siberian trips is offered, with
visas and tickets and hotels all arranged for you.

Monkey Shrine (www.monkeyshrine.com)
is a long-established China-based tour agency who can arrange Trans-Siberian
trips and tours with stopovers to your specification.

How to arrange tickets for
connecting trains & ferries...

Train
tickets London - Moscow...

The
Trans-Siberian Railway starts at St Pancras station in London,
so don't cheat by flying the first few hundred miles!
It's easy to travel from London to Moscow using Eurostar to
Brussels or Paris, a connecting train to Frankfurt and the daily Russian
sleeping-car direct from Frankfurt to Moscow,
see the London to Russia page.
You can only book European
trains a maximum of 2 or 3 months in advance, so wait to buy your train tickets
to
Moscow after you've arranged everything else. Decide which service you
want using the London to Russia page, then buy tickets
by phone or online as shown on that page.

Alternatively, you can book westbound train tickets from
Moscow to many
European cities from a Russian agency such as the four
agencies listed in option 4 above, though the final Eurostar
leg to London will need to be booked separately online.
See the
London to Russia page for train information from Moscow to
London.

You can book
trains in China yourself at the ticket office when you get
there, or you can easily pre-book them online using
www.chinahighlights.com. For train times, fares and how to buy train
tickets in China, see the Train Travel in China page.
Train times and fares for the twice-weekly train from Beijing
to Hanoi are shown on the
Vietnam page.

If
you book through a UK travel agency, they may be able to
book the Vladivostok to Korea & Japan or Shanghai to Japan
ferries
for you. However, it's cheapest to book these ferries yourself by
e-mailing or calling the ferry company.
See the Vladivostok-Korea-Japan
ferry section below for the sailing
schedule
and how to buy tickets.

After sorting out your
Trans-Siberian tickets, you need to get your visas.

How to arrange a Russian visa...

You will need
a Russian visa. Always check
the latest visa information, as it changes from time to
time. But here's a quick run-down of the
arrangements:

Tourist, transit or business visa? A tourist
visa allows stays of up to 30 days, and is usually what you
need. A business visa allows a longer stay, but is more
expensive. A transit visa allows up to 10 days in
transit, but you aren't allowed to spend time in Moscow, as
most Trans-Siberian travellers do, so a tourist visa is
usually better.

When to
apply? Visas are only issued 3 months or less
before your intended date of entry to Russia, so there's no need to
apply before then. Ideally, allow a month for the
visa processing, but if you have less time than this,
don't panic, various agencies offer 'express' services that will help you get a visa
much quicker.

Letters of invitation & visa support: A hangover
from Soviet times is that to get a visa you need supporting documentation,
usually just called 'visa support'. In theory, this is a
letter of invitation from your travel agency setting out
confirmed travel & accommodation arrangements for your entire
stay in Russia or (for
independent travellers) an accommodation voucher issued by your hotel(s)
showing confirmed accommodation for each and every night you plan to spend in Russia.
Having to pre-book all this would be ridiculously restrictive, so here's how it really works: You go to an agency such as
www.realrussia.co.uk or one of the Russian agencies listed
above and they sell you the necessary visa support for a small
fee, which allows you to get a visa without any genuine hotel
bookings, so you can travel around freely just as you would in
any other country, buying tickets and finding hotels as you
go. Behind the scenes, the agency usually has an arrangement with a local
hotel, they make a dummy 'reservation' for the period you want
to be in Russia
so they can legally issue the visa support,
though of course you don't pay for the hotel and everyone knows
(apart from the Russian government) that you have no intention
of ever using that hotel room. Crazy, eh?

The easy way to get a Russian visa: The easiest, quickest
& least-hassle way to get a Russian visa is to ask
www.realrussia.co.uk to get it for you (to use their
service, you need to be a
UK resident, or at least resident in the UK for over 90 days
before the application). Real Russia is a reliable UK agency
based in Russia which
arranges Russian
visas simply and
cheaply, with all
the necessary visa support included in the price. They have
been recommended by several seat61 correspondents.
Seat61 gets a small commission if you buy through
www.realrussia.co.uk using this link.
www.realrussia.co.uk can also arrange visas for Belarus,
Mongolia & China,
and arrange train tickets too. If you have feedback on their service, please email me.
If you're a resident of the USA, try similar US-based
agency
www.russia-travel.com.

Dates of entry & exit: Make sure you get these
right. It should be obvious, but I've known people date
their visa for the date they arrive in Moscow, then get thrown
off their sleeper train when it arrives at the Russian
frontier the night before, as their visa wasn't valid for
entering Russia until the next day. Your date of entry
into Russia is the date you physically enter Russian
territory, in other words the date your train rolls across
the frontier, not the date you reach Moscow, which is
irrelevant. Similarly, your date of exit is the date you
physically leave Russian territory, which on a westbound
sleeper train could be the day after you leave Moscow.
Double-check train times to see when it reaches the frontier,
and double-check that the embassy have given you the right
dates when you get your passport back with the visa.

Arranging a Russian visa in Beijing: It's
reported that the Russian
embassy in Beijing will not issue tourist visas for
Russia to anyone except Chinese residents, although a more
recent report (early 2012) says that they now will, at least
to Dutch passport holders, so by all means ask them.
However, they can certainly provide you with a transit visa, valid up to 10 days. It
costs around £70 and can be obtained in 1 day. This will
get you home, but will not allow you to stop off anywhere,
other than as necessary to change trains in Moscow.

How to arrange a
Belarus transit visa...

You'll need a
Belarus transit visa if you are travelling between London
&
Moscow on the direct
London-Cologne-Berlin-Warsaw-Moscow route, as all the
direct trains from Cologne, Berlin or Warsaw to Moscow or
St Petersburg pass through Belarus. However, getting
a Belarus transit visa is
relatively straightforward. You'll need a tourist
visa if you plan to stop off in Belarus.

You will need
to get your Russian visa before applying for the Belarus
one, although you can apply for both together if you go
through
www.realrussia.co.uk.

Cost: The
Belarusians increased visa fees to silly levels in 2007 and 2008, but have
fortunately lowered them again by 2015. A Belarus transit visa
now costs £15 one-way
or £25 return if you arrange it yourself direct with the
embassy, or £42 one-way or £52 return arranged through
www.realrussia.co.uk. It takes 6 working days, or there's an extra-fee
express option which takes 2 days.

For official visa information see
the Belarus embassy website, www.uk.belembassy.org
or call 020 7938 3677.
The embassy
address in London is 6 Kensington Court, London W8 5DL

,
visa section open 09:00-12:30 Monday-Friday.

The simple way to get a Belarus transit visa: If you live in the UK,
the easiest and quickest way to get a Belarus visa is to use
www.realrussia.co.uk. Real Russia is a reliable UK agency which
arranges visas simply and
cheaply, including all
necessary visa support included in the price shown on their
site. They have already recommended by one seat61 correspondent.
Seat61 gets a small commission if you buy through
www.realrussia.co.uk using this link.
www.realrussia.co.uk can also arrange Chinese and Mongolian visas,
and train tickets too. If you have feedback on their service, please email me!

Should you
avoid Belarus? Some people get worked up about
trying to avoid Belarus, and with the new higher visa fees
you might want to try. Just remember that if you pay
the visa fee, you can travel quickly and simply from
western Europe to Moscow on a direct train through Belarus
saving time and expense. Avoiding Belarus by
travelling via the Baltic states means an awkward and
time-consuming relay race of trains and buses, taking at
least 48 hours longer, with two extra hotel nights.
Going via Ukraine (Ukraine no longer requires EU citizens
to buy a visa) is quicker, but will still take at least an
extra 24 hours, changing trains in Kiev and with no easy
way to pre-book the Kiev-Moscow train before you get to
Kiev. In other words, the detour might be
interesting if you have the time and particularly want to
see Ukraine or Lithuania/Latvia on the way, but it will
take longer and in the end cost more than simply buying
the visa and travelling direct.

Getting a Belarus transit visa in Moscow:
If you're travelling westward, here's how to arrange a Belarus
visa in Moscow. The Belarus embassy is at Maroseika 17⁄6, 101990, Moscow. It's a couple of
blocks from Kitai Gorod or Lubyanka metro stations. You will
need photocopies of your passport, your Russian visa & your
train ticket through Belarus, one passport photo, US$45 for same day visa issue or US$36 for
next day visa issue (for British & EU citizens), payable in
Russian rubles (US dollars no longer necessary or accepted). The visa office is open 10:00-12:00
Mon, Tue, Thur & Fri - allow plenty of time - and you pick up your passport
& transit visa between
16:00-16:30 on those days. There's also a Belarus
consulate in St Petersburg at 8/46 Naberezhnaya Robespiera,
Apt. 66. US passport holders are currently
charged $177 for a same-day visa, because of charges
imposed by the USA on Belarusians. Visa regs &
costs change from time to time, the above is current
at the time of writing.

How to arrange a
Mongolian visa...

UK & many EU citizens citizens
didn't need a visa for a trial period from June 2014
until 31
December 2015, but need a visa again as from January 2016. For more info
see www.embassyofmongolia.co.uk.
You can arrange your Mongolian visa most easily through
www.realrussia.co.uk, alongside your Russian, Belarus and Chinese visas.

Chinese visa
requirements were tightened in 2008
for the Olympics, to require confirmed tickets into and
out of China, plus confirmed hotel bookings for every
night in China. They were relaxed again afterwards,
but tightened up yet again in November 2011, so always
check current requirements with the local Chinese
embassy. You may now need hotel reservations for
every night you plan to spend in China to get the visa,
but you can easily make hotel bookings at a site like
www.booking.com which can be cancelled at zero cost
up to a day or two before the stay.
Feedback is always appreciated!

No Chinese
visas in Moscow: The Chinese embassy in Moscow has reportedly only been issuing
Chinese visas to Russian citizens not to westerners, so don't plan to get your Chinese visa there
unless you have checked with them and they say it's OK.

Reduced
visa validity period: Note that the validity
window (the period for which a visa is valid when issued)
has reduced to just a couple of months, so don't plan on
months & months of travelling around before you reach
China, as your visa will have expired by then!

When
should you go?

Trans-Siberian in winter: This is the old Baikal to Irkutsk in
November.
You can travel all year-round. Courtesy of
Sascha & Manuela
Dubach

Worried about finding your train
if you don't speak Russian? Here's the departure board at Moscow
Yaroslavski station. Learn the alphabet and you can easily read the
destinations. You can see that train 318 to Archangel leaving at 19:35
will depart from platform 3. The platforms for train 2 to Vladivostok (the
Rossiya) departing 21:25 and train 6 to Ulan Bator
departing 21:35 are not yet shown as they are not
ready for boarding.
Learn the Russian alphabet here.
Photo courtesy of Daniel Brewster.

The
Trans-Siberian Railway runs all year round, so you can go at
any time of year. May to September are the peak months
for foreign tourists, with the warmest weather and the longest
hours of daylight. This makes booking a specific date
more difficult (you need to book well ahead) but you might
like the party atmosphere amongst like-minded travellers on
Moscow-Beijing trains 4 and 20. On the other hand,
Siberia in winter is a sight to see - the trains are well
heated, warm and cosy, you'll just need to wrap up well when
you get off for a stroll at station stops! Traveller
Rebecca Day reports from a February trip from Ulan
Bator to Moscow: "The train was really warm and
comfortable. For the outside I had snow boots, a
jumper and a long wool coat, and this was fine most of the
time. The temperature drops significantly once the sun goes
down, but as long as I was wearing a hat and gloves I felt
warm. I also brought a North Face down filled body warmer
which was like a heater in itself! I ended up not wearing
this most of the time, but it packs up really small and I'd
probably bring it again if I were travelling in winter."

Should
you travel 1st or 2nd class?

On
the Russian internal trains there are normally 3
classes: Spalny vagon 2-berth compartments, often described as 1st
class (and sometimes called myagky or lyux); kupé
4-berth compartments, usually described as 2nd class; and platskartny open-plan dormitory
cars, sometimes described as 3rd class. The Russian
Trans-Manchurian train (trains 19 & 20) only has spalny vagon 2-berth and kupé 4-berth, there's no platskartny. Kupé is the way most
travellers go, and can be considered the normal class of
travel. Spalny vagon gives you much more privacy, with 2
people instead of 4 in the same size compartment, but it costs
twice as much. The choice is yours. Platskartny is a
bit rough for most western travellers, but some budget-minded
backpackers enjoy it. The Chinese
Trans-Mongolian train (trains 3 & 4) has 1st class deluxe
2-berth, 1st class 4-berth and 2nd class 4-berth. 1st
class deluxe 2-berth is expensive but worth the extra if you
can afford it as it has two beds, an armchair, and a private
washroom with showerhead shared with the next door
compartment. It gets booked out very quickly! However, 1st class 4-berth
on train 3/4 is virtually identical to 2nd class 4-berth (see
for yourself in the
photo gallery!) and is
probably not worth the extra.

What do you do
on a train for 6 or 7 days?

This is
the question most people ask. Well, you put your feet up
and relax. You read,
watch the scenery, look out for the sights listed on your Trans-Siberian Handbook, go to meals in the restaurant car,
sleep in your own comfortable bed at night, meet
people, talk, play chess, drink tea, drink vodka, get off at
station stops and take photographs.... The
Moscow-Mongolia-Beijing route is arguably the most interesting because of
both the people on board and the sights and scenery on the way. You are
unlikely to be bored - the time just goes!

The Trans-Siberian
Handbook has a kilometre-by-kilometre account of the
sights to look out for from the train. Highly
recommended, as this helps you get the most from your
journey. You can tell where you are from the black
and white kilometre posts all along the line, usually on
the south side of the tracks.

Take plenty
of reading books -
Tolstoy's War and Peace is the most predictable title,
but it's a great read. The funny thing is, you
probably won't finish it - there's so much else to do!

Is not
speaking Russian a problem?

No, it isn't.
Very few western travellers on the Trans-Siberian Railway
can speak Russian or for that matter, Chinese or
Mongolian. I certainly can't, and everybody manages just fine. However, even if you don't speak Russian,
it is definitely worth learning the Cyrillic (Russian)
alphabet as you will then be able to read place names
and understand many Russian words. For example, 'PECTOPAH' is pronounced 'restoran' and
means (surprise surprise) 'restaurant'. 'ABTOБYC'
is pronounced 'avtobus' and means 'bus'. You'll also realise that 'CCCP',
the old acronym for the Soviet Union, is not 'see see see
pee' but 'SSSR'.
You can learn the Cyrillic (Russian)
alphabet here.

Typical
meal in a Chinese dining-car, this one on train 23 from Beijing to
Ulan Bator... Photo courtesy of Tom Woods.

All the main Trans-Siberian
trains have a restaurant car, a Russian one when in Russia, a Mongolian one in
Mongolia and a Chinese one in China. Few people go to Russia for the
cuisine, but contrary to what you might have heard, Russian restaurant car food
is quite edible and not expensive. The prices shown here are from 2013,
further feedback is always appreciated.

Russian restaurant cars:
A soup (chicken or meat borsht) costs around 350 rubles (£7.50 or $12), a
main course of steak or fish with rice or potatoes costs around 480 roubles
(£11 or $17). Don't expect an extensive menu or everything shown on
the menu to be available! Typical meals include ham and fried eggs for breakfast,
schnitzel and potatoes for lunch or dinner, with soups and
salads for starters. The restaurant car also sells beer,
Russian champagne and (of course) vodka, chocolate and snacks. You can pay
in rubles, although they may also accept euro or dollar notes.
See sample menu.

Chinese dining cars have a
selection of excellent Chinese dishes, each for around RMB 15-20 (£1.50-£2
or $2-$3), but check if your ticket includes meals on the Chinese section of
route, as it's reported that some tickets do. A beer costs around RMB
10 (£1 or $1.50).

If you don't want to buy food
& drink from the restaurant car, you can also buy food from the many vendors
or kiosks on station platforms when the train stops. But don't venture
far from the train, as stops aren't long.

Don't forget that on almost
all Trans-Siberian trains, unlimited
boiling water
is available free of charge from the samovar at the
end of each coach, so remember to bring a
mug, spoon, coffee and a selection of cuppa soups. You can save money on
restaurant car meals by bringing dried pasta or noodles, for example.
My personal
favourite is water-based drinking chocolate for a relaxing night-time
drink each evening...

What
about security? Is it safe for families or women
travelling alone?

The
Trans-Siberian is a very safe way to travel, even for families
and women travelling alone.
After all, the train is full of Russian families and women
travelling alone, it's how the Russians themselves get around! Just use common sense as you would anywhere else, lock the
compartment door at night and
don't leave your wallet or camera lying unattended in your compartment
while you go to the toilet or the restaurant car. In
addition to the normal lock on the compartment door, Russian
'Spalny Wagon' and 'kupé' compartments have a security latch
which stops the door opening more than an inch or two, and
which cannot be released from outside even with a staff key. There's also a
safe place for your bags at night - if you have a bottom bunk,
there is a metal box underneath the bunk which you can only
get to by lifting up the bunk. In other words, for anyone to
get to your bags, they will have to shift you off your bunk
first! Your carriage attendants may also lock the
access doors at each end of the corridor at night to prevent
intruders. So don't worry, you'll be safe and snug.
Men and women share the same compartments, but on some routes
you can now ask for a ladies-only compartment. If you're a
woman travelling alone and do happen to find yourself sharing
with men who make you uncomfortable, ask the carriage
attendants if they can move you to another compartment and
they normally will, without too much problem.

Do the trains have power sockets?

Suddenly, no westerner can travel anywhere without a whole
array of electrical gadgets, cameras, PDAs, iPods and mobile phones that need
charging. The situation varies by train. All Russian, Mongolian &
Chinese trains have shaver sockets in the corridor and washrooms which can be
used to recharge things with the right adaptor. Some trains have one or
two similar sockets in the corridor that can be used to recharge things if you
keep an eye on them. The very latest Russian trains including train 1/2
Rossiya and Trans-Manchurian train 19/20 have a power socket in each
compartment for charging laptops, mobile phones or digital cameras, although
train 3/4 doesn't. Your carriage attendant may be willing to charge items
using the socket in their own compartment, for a small tip.

Just to reassure you! This is a
clean & modern toilet in a 2nd class 4-berth car on a trains 1 & 2, the
Rossiya. Courtesy of Hilary Onno.

En suite washroom with shower hose attached to a deluxe 2-berth sleeper on
Moscow-Beijing trains 3 & 4. It's shared with the 2-berth compartment
next door. The photo is taken standing in the doorway from one
compartment, looking towards the door to the compartment next door. The
frosted window is between the washroom and the corridor. Water pressure in the
shower head is minimal, you may have to kneel to get any sort of shower, but the
washroom is useful for washing plates! Courtesy of
Alan Wilson

Toilets & showers...

Each sleeping-car
has at least two western-style toilets and a washroom with sinks. The
carriage attendants (provodniks) will keep the toilet clean
during the journey. How clean depends on both the
provodniks and the passengers in your car(!), but there's normally no problem,
especially on high-quality 'firmeny' trains like the Rossiya, see the photo on the
right. There are no showers on Trans-Siberian trains, with
two exceptions: On the Trans-Mongolian Moscow-Beijing
train (train 3/4), there's a shower hose in
the small private washroom shared between each adjacent pair of deluxe
1st class 2-berth compartments (see the
photo below right), but don't expect much in terms
of water pressure. There may now be a shower in one of the cars on the
Moscow-Vladivostok Rossiya (train 1/2), which you have to pay for.
Remember that the need to take a shower every single day is a
relatively recent western social trend, not a human necessity.
Remember that not so many generations ago, Sunday night was
bath night, whether you needed it or not! Just lock
yourself into the washroom half way across and make good use
of the sink and a cup of water.

Smoking...

If you're a rabid
anti-smoker, don't worry. There isn't a problem in the
compartments, corridor or restaurants which are all non-smoking. But if you're a
smoker, don't worry either. You can grab a smoke in the
vestibules between the cars or on station platforms.

Do Trans-Siberian trains run on time?

Within
Russia, the trains are remarkably punctual. My
train from Moscow arrived in Vladivostok two minutes ahead of
schedule. However, on international trains you should
expect an hour or two delay when crossing frontiers. For
example, on the Trans-Mongolian route it is not unusual to
arrive in Ulan Bator perhaps 1 or 2 hours late and in Beijing
2 to 5 hours late. Allow for this when planning any
connections.

All
Trans-Siberian trains stop at stations every few hours for
between 5 and 20 minutes, enough time to get off the train,
stretch your legs, take photos and buy something from the
vendors on the platform. But not enough time for a tour
of the town!

Many
people travel all the way from Moscow to Beijing or
Vladivostok all in one go on one of the direct trains. Other people
prefer to stop off along the way, breaking up the long journey
and seeing something of Siberia or Mongolia.
Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk (for Lake Baikal) and
Ulan Bator (Mongolia) are the most usual
stop-overs.

On the direct Moscow-Beijing trains, the varied scenery and
friendly atmosphere on board make travelling straight through
without stopovers perfectly bearable and indeed, fun. There are usually
lots of westerners on board as well as Russians, Chinese and
Mongolians, almost all of them making the whole trip, like yourself.
However, on a Moscow-Vladivostok train, you might be the only
westerner on board for much of the journey, the whole trip is
made within Russia, and relatively few of your
fellow-travellers will be making the whole journey to Vladivostok.
It may be better to break up this trip with one or two
stopovers, perhaps at Yekaterinburg or Irkutsk.

Remember
that Trans-Siberian trains are 'reservation obligatory'.
Every time you step on
board a train you must have a confirmed sleeping-berth
reservation for that specific journey on that specific train on that
specific date - you cannot hop
on and off trains spontaneously without a reservation. So if you want to travel from, say, Moscow to
Beijing stopping off at Irkutsk you need a ticket/reservation
from Moscow to Irkutsk and a second separate
ticket/reservation for the train you want to take from Irkutsk to Beijing.
Think of these as two separate journeys, not one. You can arrange all the tickets and reservations
before you go.

If
you are stopping off, remember that the weekly direct international trains 4
& 20 from Moscow to Beijing are primarily for passengers making
international journeys from Moscow to Mongolia or
China, although it is possible to use them for domestic trips within Russia if
you can get a berth. In practice, a typical trip from Moscow to Beijing
with stopovers at Irkutsk and Ulan Bator is best made using the Rossiya or
another Russian domestic train such as train 100 from Moscow to
Irkutsk, then the 4 times-a-week train 6 from Irkutsk to Ulan
Bator and then the weekly Ulan Bator-Beijing train,
see the Trans-Siberian
timetable section for train times.

In
theory, the Russian railways have a system whereby if you hold
a ticket/reservation from A to C, and get off the train at B,
you can get the ticket endorsed by the station manager, then
make a second reservation and pay a small reservation charge
when you want to resume your journey. However, this does
not work with international tickets. The Russians
themselves don't often
use this facility, so Russian
railway staff may not be familiar with it. I recommend
buying separate tickets/reservations for each leg of your
journey before you go, but if you want to try this, you had
better practice your
Russian language skills!

Can you take a car, bike or motorcycle?

Believe it or not, this gets asked
from time to time. Trans-Siberian passenger trains do
not carry cars or motorbikes, full stop. However, you
can take bicycles with you, zipped up in a bike bag with
pedals removed and the handlebars turned, free of charge as
hand luggage. Bear in mind that it will take up space in
your sleeping compartment, so it may be less anti-social to
book a berth in a more spacious 2-berth compartment than to
inflict your bike on three fellow travellers in a 4-berth
compartment.

You'll sometimes hear
Moscow-Vladivostok in 7 days on the Rossiya referred to as the longest
train ride of them all. It isn't. Nor is going Moscow-Vladivostok on
the on the slightly slower daily train
100. Once a
week or so the Rossiya conveys two through sleepers from Moscow to
the North Korean border. This is detached at Ussuryisk
just an hour or so before Vladivostok, then it heads south all
the way
to Korea, making this a longer continuous train ride than
Moscow-Vladivostok. But this isn't the longest train
ride either. There is a through train from Donetsk and
Kharkov in
Ukraine to Vladivostok, and this appears to be the longest
scheduled continuous train ride of them all. Unless you
know differently, of course!

The Europe-Asia obelisk: Approaching
Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) at the kilometre post exactly
1,777 km from Moscow, the Rossiya passes the obelisk marking the
boundary between Europe & Asia, right by the track. Some trains pass
this in darkness, including Moscow-Beijing train 4. Courtesy of David Smith.

A brief history of the Trans
Siberian Railway...

In
the late 19th century, Japan, Britain and America all managed
to gain footholds on the Chinese coast as bases for their
trade with China and the Orient. Russia too needed to
secure her foothold on the east as well as securing the vast
expanses of Siberia, so in 1891 Tsar Alexander III approved a
plan for a trans-continental line linking Moscow and St
Petersburg with Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, as this was the only
year-round ice-free port on Russian territory.

A
railway had been built as far as Ekaterinberg as early as
1878, and this was steadily extended Eastwards. Omsk was
reached in 1894, Irkutsk and Lake Baikal in 1898. The
Trans-Siberian Railway finally reached Vladivostok in 1901,
but for several years
passengers had to cross Lake Baikal by ice-breaking ferry to
connect with a second train on the other side - only in 1904
was the line around Lake Baikal completed and the whole
journey from Moscow to Vladivostok possible on a single
train. Until 1916, the eastern end of the journey involved cutting
across China, over part of what is now the Trans-Manchurian
route - you can see how the Trans-Manchurian line initially
heads towards Vladivostok on the
route map above. The Russians secured the right to build
and maintain this route across China thanks to a treaty signed
after they made a generous loan to China to help them pay
off their debts to Japan. From 1916, the complete journey
could be made from Moscow to Vladivostok within Russia, taking
the
route followed by today's 'Rossiya' and skirting the Chinese
border to the north via Khabarovsk. The Trans-Mongolian
line is a relatively recent addition to the Trans-Siberian
network - construction started in 1940, it reached Ulan Bator
in 1949, and it was completed
into China by 1956.

The Trans-Siberian Railway today...

Today,
the Trans-Siberian Railway is a key part of the massive
Russian railway system. It is not a tourist line - it is
a real, working railway, carrying a huge amount of freight and
passenger traffic. It is double-track and electrified
all the way from Moscow to Vladivostok, and on some parts of
the line freight trains rumble past every few minutes.
It is not the only line in Russia - on the contrary, if you
saw a map of Russian railways you would be hard-pressed to
decide which of the many routes Trans-Siberian trains actually
take for the first few thousand miles East of Moscow.
There is in fact now a second route across Siberia to the
north of the Trans-Siberian to Sovetskaya Gavan on the Pacific
coast, called the BAM (Baikal-Amur-Maestral railway).
Started in the 1930s, it was only completed in 1991.
However, this route is of little interest to most Western
travellers.

The Europe-Asia obelisk: Approaching
Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) at the kilometre post exactly
1,777 km from Moscow, the Rossiya passes the obelisk marking the
boundary between Europe & Asia, right by the track. Some trains pass
this in darkness, including Moscow-Beijing train 4. Courtesy of David Smith.

If
cost isn't an issue, you can ride the Trans-Siberian Railway in luxury with
deluxe accommodation and 3-course meals with stopovers & tours included, using one of
these two of privately-run deluxe cruise trains. Expect fares of quite a
few thousand pounds per person!

Railbookers is a train travel specialist who can arrange train
travel from the UK to Moscow, a trip on the luxury Golden Eagle train from
Moscow to Vladivostok or Moscow to Beijing, and flights back to the UK. A
15-night trips costs from around £5,300 from Moscow to Beijing or £9,700 from
Moscow to Vladivostok, excluding flights, visas and travel to Moscow.

Great Rail Journeys - for escorted tours on the Golden Eagle...

UK-based company Great Rail Journeys (www.greatrail.com)
offers 5-star escorted tours, leaving London overland by Eurostar via Brussels,
Cologne & Warsaw to Moscow using scheduled trains, then across Siberia on a
deluxe charter train to Vladivostok with private en suite sleepers, lounge and
restaurant with stops and tours along the way at places like Irkutsk, Lake
Baikal, Ulan Ude and even Ulan Bator in Mongolia. Expect it to cost over
£6,500, though this does include all transport, accommodation, meals and even
wine in the restaurant car.
Great Rail Journeys also offer rail-based holidays to other countries in
Europe and worldwide. Check the holiday details online, then call 01904
527120 to book or use their
online booking form. Seat61 gets some commission to help support the
site if you book your holiday through this link and phone number, please mention
seat 61 when booking.

Lernidee cruise train: Moscow - Mongolia - Beijing in 15/16
days

Roughly once a month May to September, this luxury train links Moscow with China
in either direction, with stopover & tours included on a 15 or 16 day itinerary.
It can also be used for shorter sections. You can book this train direct
with the operator at
www.transsiberian-travel.com or through
Railbookers
(UK 020 3327 0761, US/Canada
toll-free 1-888-829-4775, Australia toll-free
1300 971 526.

The Lernidee private
train across Siberia... Photo courtesy of Lernidee.

Category 2 superior
sleeper... Photo courtesy of Lernidee.

The restaurant car.
All meals are included... Photo courtesy of Lernidee.

Ferry m/v Eastern Dream...

The m/v Eastern
Dream at Vladivostok. Photo courtesy of David Smith

The time-honoured weekly ferry run by
Russia's Far East Shipping Company (FESCO) fell victim to the recession in late
2009. However, a
new year-round weekly ferry from Vladivostok to South Korea & Japan started
up in its place that same year. The Eastern Dream is a good modern ship built in 1993.
Their official website is
www.dbsferry.com/02_ticket/ticket03.asp.

Eastbound: Vladivostok ► Donghae
(South Korea) ► Sakaiminato (Japan)

From March to November, she sails from Vladivostok every
Wednesday
at 14:00, arriving Donghae at 10:00 on Thursday, sailing again at 18:00 Thursday
to arrive in Sakaiminato at 09:00 on Friday.

From December to February,
she sails from Vladivostok every
Tuesday
at 17:00, arriving Donghae at 14:00 on Wednesday. She stays overnight and
sails from Donghae at 18:00 on Thursday, arriving in Sakaiminato at 09:00 on
Friday.

How much
does it cost?...

The
cheapest fare from Vladivostok to Japan or vice versa is US$235 one-way or $435
return, that's in economy class with a berth in a shared open-plan sleeping
area. Sharing a 2-berth cabin the fare rises to $485 one-way or
$825. Deluxe suites also available.

Trains from Sakaiminato to Tokyo...

The ship arrives at Sakaiminato
international ferry terminal, around 2.5 miles (4km) east of Sakaiminato
station. A free bus leaves from outside the ferry terminal after all ferry
passengers have emerged from passport control, taking you to the station.

At Sakaiminato railway station, you are unlikely to have any problems buying train tickets
to Tokyo or anywhere else in Japan on the day of travel. However, if you
plan to do any further train travelling in Japan, definitely consider a
Japan Rail Pass. A 7-day pass pays
for itself in a single round trip between Tokyo & Hiroshima, for example.
Sakaiminato is now an official Japan Rail Pass exchange office, which
means that if you've
pre-purchased
a rail pass as explained here you can exchange the voucher for the pass at
Sakaiminato and start using it.

Sakaiminato is on a branch line
with regular local trains to Yonago. Yonago has regular limited express
departures for Okayama where you can pick up the Shinkansen high-speed trains
east to Osaka, Kyoto & Tokyo or west to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You can check train times from Sakaiminato to any station in
Japan at www.hyperdia.com
(English button upper left).
For more information about train travel in Japan, see the
Train Travel in Japan page.

Trains from Donghae to Seoul..

Trains link Donghae with Seoul (in
this case Seoul Cheongnyangi station rather than Seoul
main Station) 6 times a day, journey time around 5 hours 55 minutes, see
www.korail.go.kr (Tip for finding train times: Use 'Cheongnyangi'
as your origin/destination, not 'Seoul').

On board the m/v Eastern
Dream...

There are a range of comfortable
cabins on board, a restaurant, shop and bar. You can spend Yen, Won, or US$ on
board, but definitely not roubles. The ship remains on Vladivostok time
until 22:00, then the clocks are put back 2 hours to Korean/Japanese time.

4-berth inside cabin with shower &
toilet. Note the Japanese-style mats rather than western berths.

Arrival in Japan, all the
way from London: Sailing in to Sakaiminato.

Traveller's reports...

Traveller Matthew Woodward
reports: "I travelled on the ship in December 2014, and at this time
of the year the published timetable was quite different from normal. There was
no crossing at all the week before (owing to Christmas), and on my dates the
ship stopped overnight in Donghae, allowing a night to be spent in South Korea.
The cabins on board are quite expensive for what they are. I would recommend the
third class dormitories which seemed more comfortable than the more expensive
but rather claustrophobic second class 8 berth cabins (very hot). The ship has a
good bar which serves snack food and a restaurant that serves a Korean buffet
(buy tickets from the Purser's office). Do try the Korean "pizza" and the local
rice wine drink called "Makgeolli" served in the bar. The ferry terminals in
Vladivostok and Donghae are good and have shops selling food, hard currency and
souvenirs. Rules were enforced when leaving Donghae that prohibited carrying
even pocket penknives onto the ship. The gangplank is a narrow and steep climb,
but the ship's crew will happily carry your luggage up for you if you ask."
See Mathew's illustrated blog about the Eastern Dream at
www.matthew-woodward.com/2014/12/kings-of-the-wild-frontier.html.

Bryn Thomas' excellent Trans-Siberian
Handbook has journey planning information, town guides, train
information, the history of the line, and most
importantly, a mile-by-mile guide to
the sights you can see from the train, to help you get the most
from your trip. The Lonely
Planet guide to the Trans-Siberian Railway is also highly
recommended. Buying one or both of these
Trans-Siberian guidebooks is well worth it, both for planning
your trip and on the go.

At Amazon.co.uk...

You should also take a
good general guidebook for the countries you are visiting, and
perhaps a Russian phrasebook, too. I think the
Lonely Planets and Rough Guides are about the best ones out
there for the serious independent traveller, with plenty of
historical and cultural background as well as stacks of
practical information on accommodation, places to eat, things
to see, visas, transport, dangers and annoyances. You
won't regret buying any of these..! If
you buy anything at Amazon through these links,
Seat61 gets a small commission which helps support the site.

Also consider
these guidebooks - click the
images to buy online

Book a
hotel
in Moscow, Siberian cities or Beijing...

www.hotelscombined.com
checks all the main hotel booking sites at once to find the widest choice of
hotels & the cheapest seller. It's been named as the World's Leading Hotel
Comparison Site in the World Travel Awards and I recommend it
to find hotels in even the smallest places and to check that another retailer
isn't selling the same hotel for less.

www.booking.com
is my favourite hotel booking site, and unless HotelsCombined throws up major price
differences I prefer doing my bookings in one place here.

You can usually book with free
cancellation - this allows you to confirm your accommodation at no risk before train
booking opens. It also means you can hold accommodation while you finalise
your itinerary, and alter your plans as they evolve - a feature I use all
the time when putting a trip together.

Tripadvisor hotel reviews...

www.tripadvisor.com is a good place
to find independent travellers' reviews of the main hotels.
It also has the low-down on all the sights & attractions too.

Backpacker hostels...

www.hostelworld.com: If you're on a budget,
don't forget the backpacker hostels. Hostelworld has online booking of cheap private
rooms or dorm beds in backpacker hostels in most Indian cities at rock-bottom prices.

Take out decent travel insurance, it's essential...

Never travel without proper travel insurance from a reliable insurer
with at least £1m or preferably £5m medical cover. It should also cover
loss of cash & belongings (up to a limit), and trip cancellation. An annual
multi-trip policy is usually cheapest even for just 2 or 3 trips
a year - I have an annual policy myself.
However, don't expect travel insurance to bail you out of every missed
connection, see
the advice on missed connections here. Here are some suggested insurers,
Seat61 gets a little commission if you buy through these
links, and feedback from using
insurance for rail & ferry travel is always welcome.

In
the UK, use
www.confused.com to compare prices & policy features across
major insurance companies.

If you have a pre-existing medical condition or are over 65, see
www.JustTravelCover.com
- 10% discount with code seat61.

Get an
EU health card, it's free...

If you're a
UK citizen travelling in Europe, you should apply for a free
European Health Insurance Card, which entitles you to free or
reduced rate health care if you become ill or get injured in
many European countries, under a reciprocal arrangement with
the NHS. This replaced the old E111 forms
as from January 2006.
The EHIC card is available from ww.nhs.uk. It doesn't remove the need for
travel insurance, though.

Taking out an extra credit card costs nothing, but if you keep it in a different part of your luggage you
won't be left stranded if
your wallet gets stolen. In addition,
some credit cards are better for
overseas travel than others. Martin Lewis's
www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-travel-money
explains which UK credit cards have the lowest currency
exchange commission loadings when you buy something
overseas, and the lowest cash withdrawal fees when you use
an ATM abroad.

When you're travelling you often use free WiFi in public places which may not be
secure. A VPN means your connection to the internet is encrypted & always
secure, even using unsecured WiFi. In countries such as China where access
to Twitter & Facebook is restricted, a VPN gets around these restrictions.
And lastly, you can select the geographic location of the IP address you browse
with, to get around geographic restrictions which some websites apply - for
example one booking site charges a booking fee to non-European visitors but none
to European visitors, so if you're not located in Europe you can avoid this fee
by browsing with a UK IP address using a VPN.
VPNs & why you need one explained.
ExpressVPN
is a best buy and I use them myself.